alternate.eago wrote:I thought you had a spare 3s in your garage from when you did the yellow deuce...

Well, technically yes - but I'm attempting to keep that one intact to keep with the MR2. I also don't know if any additional damage beyond the spun bearing(s) occurred in that one. Guess I should look further into it.

Well, I decided to actually have a go at the infamous JB Weld approach. I've read a number of success stories with this stuff - if I can get this to last me through the summer, all the better!

Oh, and btw, there's more than one crack in the vicinity. Despite my good intentions, it certainly appears I did a crap job at making sure my car had the proper coolant mixture when it sat for a while..

Pulled basically everything I could in the front to minimize the amount of swearing and acrobatics to get the job done

You can see the one crack at the top of the freeze plug cavity - it extends further up about halfway to the mating surface. The other, longer crack is off to the left, kinda horizontal...you can see the dark line from moisture seeping through.

My attempt at tracing the crack and 'starter' holes to prevent the crack from spreading

A rough surface is recommended for proper adhesion. In addition to this, I went at this with 120grit sandpaper (not pictured). Rough enough?

JB Weld applied. I placed a thin piece of clear plastic over the freeze plug area to keep this stuff from oozing south. I'll go in there with the dremel and clean it up a bit so I can at least get that piece removed. Considering this entire area is pretty stress-free, I'm optimistic this approach will work, at least through the summer. Anybody wanna start placing bets?

Well, so far the patched area is holding well - but only to see other leaks spring up from what appears to be behind the block. I guess it's not much of a surprise if the original damage is truly attributed to freezing/expansion.

In a last ditch act of desperation, I added some of that Bars stop-leak. I know, I know...prob a bad idea. But at this point, I already knew the block was shot. My radiator is an aftermarket one that doesn't look long for this world. What's left? The head and heater core - the head can always be tanked. The heater core, well, will see if this stuff affects it much. I don't drive the car in the winter anyway - as soon as salt hits the road, the car stays indoors.

At any rate, I managed to get the car to the OC All Wheel Drive meet with a few other fellow members (literally hit the road 6 hours after I added this stuff). Despite the heat, the ol girl made it there no problems. It wasn't until I made it back to Annapolis that I ran into an overheating issue. About 1 gal of coolant had pushed out the reservoir overflow. Fortunately, it was a good stopping point for dinner anyway. And even more fortunate, after topping back off with coolant (a shout out to Eric and Willy for jumping in to help), the trac made it the rest of the way to Mt Airy without issue.

Not positive why I lost the coolant. Prob didn't help that I pressed my luck with my driving habits on the way back (no thanks to Willy and Eric... ). But all is well - she's safe n sound in the garage (still no leaks!). I'll likely limp along, keeping my drives local for the summer. In the meantime, I'll source a decent shortblock and have the machine shop go over it. Maybe I'll pull the head from the old MR2 GenII so I can have a full longblock on the stand before I start transferring components.

If anything, my baby is going to come out looking even cleaner than it already does. That engine bay is gonna be immaculate.

Well, after much discouragement between the two downed cars, I've finally mustered up the motivation I need to get things back on track. I sourced a full shortblock in VA for $100 over the weekend (head is still attached, seller will get it from me at a later time). It appears to be in great shape, but I'll probably still tear it down and have it tanked and inspected for good measure. It came out of a MR2 that received a Gen3 swap (engine was good before it was pulled).

Once I have a good base to work with, I'll just start transferring everything over piece by piece. Realistically, this probably won't be done until Spring. But I have the 165 to help ease the pain for a while.

Pless, if you're reading this, this will be a good time for me to see what you have left over for HPC coated goodies you may want to offload.